UNDER CONSTRUCTION — The exhibition archive is to give international visibility and accessibility to East European art events, and to enable cross-national research and comparisons. With the collaboration of international experts essential data of exhibitions and event series of key importance are collected and contextualized.

Preparations for a concert by Alexei Lubimov in the hall of the Academy of Art as part of the avant-garde music festival, 1976. Photo: Kirils Šmeļkovs

Preparations for a concert by Alexei Lubimov in the hall of the Academy of Art as part of the avant-garde music festival, 1976. Photo: Kirils Šmeļkovs

Preparations for a concert by Alexei Lubimov in the hall of the Academy of Art as part of the avant-garde music festival, 1976. Photo: Kirils Šmeļkovs

Date : April 1976–October 1977

Location: Latvian Art Academy hall and the student club of the Polytechnic Institute in Anglican Church, in Riga

Participants and organizers: Alexei Lubimov, et. al.

The first significant experience of contemporary music for musically conservative Riga was the concert series “Twentieth-Century Music” by Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov during the 1975/76 season. Although the series was banned, architecture student Hardijs Lediņš and violinist Boriss Avramecs encouraged Lubimov to play his intended program at an unofficial festival. Its culmination was a concert at the Art Academy, where Riga and Moscow musicians performed works by Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and others. There were also performance elements presented by the musicians and selected audience members, as well as a happening after the second part of the concert with spontaneous improvisations, provocative acts, and absurdity. “It was fun but it ended in scandal, because it broke all the rules and notions about high-minded art,” recalled Avramecs[1].

The festival also took place the following year, officially sanctioned as “The Days of Music” dedicated to music by contemporary Soviet composers and the sixtieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution. But hidden under the acceptable name were works by avant-garde Soviet composers, including Vladimir Martinov’s Easter Cantata, which was not part of the approved program. Deemed to be “religious propaganda,” this work served to justify the state’s repression of the musicians and organizers and a complete ban on playing similar music, either officially or unofficially.